Elon Musk Hints at Tesla's Bitcoin Holdings in Twitter Exchange

Elon Musk has hinted at how many Bitcoins Tesla holds after a Twitter user shared a rough estimate of its holdings. Dave Lee (@heydave7), who said on his Twitter bio that he has been investing in the electric vehicle-making company since 2012, suggested Tesla should be holding 42,069 Bitcoins and that the total holding may amount to $1.47 billion (roughly Rs. 10,935 crores). Lee based his calculation on the fair market value of “digital assets” the company said it has in a US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. Responding to Lee, Musk said Tesla does not have that many Bitcoins “but it's close.”

In his calculation, Lee used Bitcoin's value on June 30 — the date Tesla used in its SEC filing. On that day, the average price at which Bitcoin traded was around $35,000 (roughly Rs. 25 lakhs). Tesla said the fair market value of “such digital assets held as of June 30, 2021, was $1.47 billion.” It, however, did not explicitly said that the digital assets were Bitcoins. At the time of writing, Bitcoin price in India stood at Rs. 29.6 lakhs.

There has been some speculation about how large Tesla's exposure is to Bitcoins or any other cryptocurrency, since Musk initially supported the world's largest cryptocurrency before throwing his weight behind Dogecoin, a meme-based currency that was primarily launched to poke fun at Bitcoin. He has again appeared to support Bitcoin and also agreed with concerns among environmentalists about its use of fossil fuel for mining.

In February, Tesla announced a $1.5-billion (roughly Rs. 11,000 crores) investment in Bitcoin and plans to accept the cryptocurrency as payment for its electric vehicles. But Musk reversed the decision  three months later.

Speaking at a recent virtual conference, Musk revealed that he and his privately-owned aerospace company SpaceX also own Bitcoin. However, he didn't disclose the extent of SpaceX's investment in Bitcoin.

The 50-year-old tycoon also said he has also invested in Ethereum, the second most popular cryptocurrency. According to a list of Bitcoin treasuries, the only public company that owns more Bitcoin than Tesla is business intelligence firm MicroStrategy.